Woman's Missing Lottery Ticket Worth $532K Found Just Before It Expires

A Graham, North Carolina, woman's misplaced lottery ticket that was the winner of $532,234 was found just before it expired in early March.

According to a press release issued by the North Carolina Lottery, Ana Maya purchased the winning ticket for the September 6 Carolina Cash 5 drawing. She told officials she was in the midst of moving to a new house and packed the winning ticket in one of the boxes.

However, she was unable to find the ticket when she was unpacking.

"These last couple of months have been very stressful trying to find it," Maya told lottery officials. "I totally forgot where I put it."

Per lottery officials, winners have 180 days to claim their prize before it expires. Had Maya not found the ticket before March 6, she would not have been able to collect the winnings.

Jonathan LaRowe, the public relations specialist for the North Carolina Lottery, told Newsweek most people claim their prizes, and lottery officials try to be clear that winners have a certain amount of time before tickets expire. Occasionally, winning tickets expire before the prize is claimed.

In the event that a prize is not claimed, half of the prize money goes toward the lottery's education fund and the other half goes toward other lottery prizes.

Maya's search came to an end when she found the ticket in one of her old notebooks from high school. She explained that she must have placed the ticket in the notebook to keep it safe.

"I was very, very relieved when I finally found it," Maya said. "That was the last place I would have looked."

LaRowe said Maya is the only person who won the Carolina Cash 5 jackpot in that drawing, though other people won some of the other smaller prizes.

The odds of someone winning the jackpot is one in 962,598.

To play the Carolina Cash 5 game, players choose five numbers ranging from one to 43 and mark the numbers on a slip.

LaRowe said it is one of the most popular games.

"We just had two people win and split the jackpot two ways," he said. "Each winner won about $235,000."

Because the game is so popular, LaRowe said there are a fair number of jackpot winners, but he said it was "pretty amazing" when there was a stretch of four jackpot winners in a row at one point.

When speaking with Maya, LaRowe said he got a sense of relief from her as she claimed her winnings.

"She recently moved houses, and moving is stressful enough as it is," he said. "But, trying to locate a missing lottery ticket worth over half a million dollars adds to that stress."

Maya, who will take home $346,005, told lottery officials she plans to use the prize money to pay some bills, invest, take a vacation and will set some aside for her two children.